Book Talk: Edward Wong on the Edge of Empire
The New York Times journalist tells us how his father followed Mao's star in the 1950s — and how the frontiers he reported on in...
The Martyrdom of Liu Xiaobo
China’s dissident writer was an exemplar of iconoclastic intellectual spirit, pursuing a more humane society despite state repression. A new biography draws the arc of...
Mother Tongues
Yiyun Li, the Chinese-born writer of fiction and memoir, left in 1996 and has moved on to other settings in her work. But can a...
Book Talk: Alec Ash on Rural Escape in Dali
From dissidents to drop-outs, why are some Chinese seeking a rural escape hatch from the promises of the modern urban state? An Asia Society book...
China’s Lexicon of Digital Resistance
Netizens on the Chinese internet have been using buzzwords and memes for decades, to express obliquely what they cannot directly. From the “river crab” to...
The Reverse Migrants
After decades of urbanization and economic development, a cohort of China's population is seeking rural refuge and personal development instead — moving back to the...
One for the History Books
How Endymion Wilkinson’s encyclopedia of Chinese history grew from 70,000 words in 1973 to 1.75 million words for its 50th anniversary edition.
Ep. 4: How ‘Leftover Women’ Reshape China
Educated, unmarried Chinese women have been dubbed “leftovers” by the state, who want them to focus on having children. Their independence is transforming China’s demographics...
‘I’ve Been Liberated From a Cage’
Murong Xuecun, formerly one of the last dissident writers left in China, is now living in exile. How does a novelist get to the point...
Tears of Salt
Rural women in China have been disadvantaged and abused for millennia. A star Chinese journalist shows how in one village, little has changed.
Will We Hear the Real Stories of Chinese Female Workers Again?
A women’s rights activist, one of the “Feminist Five” detained by authorities in 2015, discusses a banned Chinese book about the lives of female factory...